Dovey property may be legal for mining

CONEMAUGH TOWNSHIP- — In an interesting twist to Conemaugh Township’s continuing zoning quandaries, mining may be OK on the Terri Ann Dovey property after all.

Vice Chairman Albert Zuccolotto said he and the other supervisors have been asked to provide written proof that this land was rezoned to R1-single family and R2-multiple family districts since the township’s comprehensive plan was drafted in the early 1970s.

Thus far, he said, this proof has not surfaced in the municipality’s archived meeting minutes.

“We’re going through these records in vain. At this point there’s nothing on record to show (the property was changed from rural-residential status),” Zuccolotto said.

The Dovey property became a hot topic this spring and summer when the family requested a zoning change from R1 and R2 to allow PBS Coals of Friedens to begin surface mining several hundred acres of property near Laurel View Village.

Public opinion soured on the proposal, however, and Dovey withdrew the request just before supervisors voted to formally terminate it.

Zuccolotto admitted that the absence of this record could change the permitted use this land.

“I’m very conscientious of that,” he said. “(But) for all intents and purposes, verbally it’s still R2.”

Joe Marisa, Dovey’s husband, was noncommittal about their plans for the property should the township fail to produce this record.

“We’re going to wait to see what they find,” he said.

According to Marisa, the township’s comprehensive plan in the early 1970s listed a large part of the Dovey property as rural-residential.

He said he’s researched county and township files over the past six months and has seen no record of a formal change in spite of a recent map that shows the land as R1 and R2.

“I think it was a mistake that it was put on that way,” Marisa said. “Just like Laurel View wants their mistakes corrected, we want our mistakes corrected.”